Hi Xoanon!

I bought the french Lucasfilm Magazine. There was a teasing cover promising exclusive interview with Christopher Lee. The baseline reads "calls to the force in episode 2, and throws a spell upon Lord of the rings". From the beginnig of the interview, M. Lee shows clearly that he totally respects his vow of secrecy in a meaningful comment about his character in SWE2 :

Christopher Lee : […] I’ve been entrusted for many secrets during WW2, and if I spoke, people died. I was in the intelligence service, special ops, and I’m not going to tell much more. I’ve signed the « official secret act » that bounds me for life. And what I mean by this , is that I’m able to keep a secret, and if I’m asked to say nothing, I say nothing. Never.

Later on, M. Lee speaks about how experienced directors know the importance of « having fun » (speaking about his experiences with Lucas, Spielberg, Joe Dante and Tim Burton) .

CL : […] in the same way, we had great fun on LOTR, this gigantic epic adventure […]

Now come some good excerpts from the interview…

Q : Are you in the 3 LOTR movies ?

CL : I’m surely in the two first. Concerning the third, I’m not sure. I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement. Similar to the one with Star Wars which forbids me to reveal anything. […]

Q : Have the 3 movies been filmed at the same time ?

CL : I’ll just say that they filmed the whole story. I really cannot say more. They’re shooting the whole story which will be shaped in three different movies. According to my personnal involvement, and what I’ve seen of action scenes, I would say that the effect will be as big as StarWars’ in its time. The two movies possess an epic dimension, though they’re absolutely not alike since the first takes place in space in an undefined epoch, and the other takes place on earth, in fact the « middle-earth » in, again, an undefined epoch. No epoch or precise date is the only connection between these two productions.

Q : I’m a great admirer of LOTR director Peter Jackson. Do you feel the same way?

CL : He’s extraordinary. He’s an absolutely remarkable director. And I know what I’m talking about, because I had the privilege to work with several directors of that level. Of course, in the case of LOTR, what Peter Jackson is doing comes from the mind and work of another genius, J.R.R. Tolkien. But Peter Jackson is an incredible director. He has extraordinary intuition – all of the great directors know exactly what they want and how to get it. They don’t always reach it, they would be first to admit that. But Peter Jackson’s intuition in terms of dialogues, scene organization, is infallible. He seems to always know exactly what he wants – when he says « OK, we just got to print all this », we can be sure we won’t do better, that is very encouraging.

Q: How long is oyur shoot in Australia?